Some I observed laughing, others pouting, the curved lines of their legs, hips and arching lower backs as they skipped and ran and rolled and swam somehow mirroring the sea-carved curves of the cliff that clung to the coastal reach as it disappeared around corners. They commandeered the beach for weeks.
I was too stunned by their physical form and considered poise to do much about my infatuations beyond attempting to offer a shy smile. Even that, to my horror, was often an impossibility, as the muscles around my mouth rebelled at the crucial moment and it instead came out as an awkward twisted grimace smeared across the blush of my face.
Those that glowered back as I stood towelling myself dry after an evening swim or, even more wounding, looked right through me, I found the most beautiful and beguiling. A withering look from one could crush the soul and destroy a day, yet the suggestion of a smile might make me dizzy for hours afterwards.
Frequently I thought about one girl in particular. A dark-haired young woman, a year or two older than me, with skin as white as paper. Skin so thin I imagined that close up it might be possible to see the map of her inner workings beneath it.
I had only seen her twice, on concurrent days, ankle-deep in the sand at the water’s edge, but in my mind I visited her for nights on end, creating increasingly elaborate scenarios that developed from us first engaging in deep and meaningful conversation, to me coming to her aid when she was stung by a jellyfish (though I had seen none) or was stranded on a rocky boulder as the tide came in (I had seen too many matinee screenings of Tyrone Power and Gary Cooper films at the Miners’ Institute on Saturdays).
Then, ultimately, it would lead to her, the unnamed young woman, kissing me first on the cheek, and then on the mouth, and then us falling to the sand as the spray washed over us and then –
And then I would feel an ache of longing inside, if only to learn her name.
Perhaps it was Kathleen or Angela or Jeanette or Dorothy. Or maybe something more exotic. Perhaps she was Italian or Spanish or French. Cécile or Carlotta.
Of course, in these fantastical scenarios the beach was devoid of screaming children and small swirls of steaming dog dirt and people munching on pickled eggs, and my mouth was able to smile correctly, and I knew all the right words in all the right order, and everything about me was different, and better.
It was the first time I’d seen women in such a way. Back at home, there were only the schoolgirls of the village, most of whom I had known since birth, or else they were distant cousins or the sisters of schoolmates, all of us shoved together by geography and circumstance, the subsequent overfamiliarity an inevitable consequence of growing up in close proximity. Reinvention was an impossibility too for those who ever sought it, and even minor acts of individual self-expression could bring about ridicule amongst those who claimed some sort of unspoken ownership over your very existence. Veering too far from the place that we were each expected to occupy in the grander scheme of things was rarely rewarded. Quite the opposite. It was assumed that the young were to settle down soon and age quickly, and wear their best suits as their fathers did on a Sunday.
Then there were the older women of the community, some of them strong and heroic, others worn down by worry or cruel and indifferent husbands. Finally there were those few women of the village who were said to leave bottles of HP Sauce in the front window to signal the temporary absence of their husbands to any passing workmen – drivers on the brewery drays, perhaps, or skilled labourers from far-flung towns or villages – though they only appeared to exist in malicious rumour and back-room gossip. If they were in plain sight I might have noticed them, but sex for most of us was a foreign country rarely visited and never discussed. Few females I knew ever frolicked; there was nowhere to frolic in a place whose brickwork was dyed black by soot-smoke and whose skies billowed with coke dust and whose surrounding farmed fields of row upon row of ploughed and planted furrows were featureless and functional, nor was there ever much of a reason either. Fewer still would have been at ease showing the world the birthmarks, freckles or moles that decorated their beautiful sun-starved skin as the young ladies did on the beach in the bay that summer.
In time they would leave their various states of repose to return home – to factory jobs, perhaps, or secretarial college; to overbearing fathers, to errant boyfriends or fast-talking fiancés, and then, perhaps, to dreary husbands; to sunless shifts behind desks or on factory floors; to shortening autumn days and long winter nights in dance halls and cafes with steamed-up windows and the stale lingering stink of tobacco smoke, hair oil, decaying English teeth and damp woollen coats. And then, perhaps, in five or ten years’ time, there would be babies for some of them, the close confinement of domesticity drawing in, and the slight souring towards all things once thought of as sweet. Worlds shrinking. Some might become their mothers, waking one day to discover with horror that they had married their fathers. Life for most was beyond their control, though I had already made it my singular goal not to fall foul of limited expectation. I hoped many of the young women felt able to do the same.
But for now at least, summer seemed endless and something unfamiliar stirred within me on those evenings as I rolled up my towel and glanced at these free girls of the bay, whose sole purpose appeared to be to stretch and yawn and smile and smoke; to see and be seen.
It was a hunger, perhaps, of a different kind. Something new awakened.
It was desire, and young manhood was undoubtedly within me like a benevolent parasite. It had taken residence and was slowly altering me from the inside, and I was merely a passive host as complex chemicals steered me through the summer. There was little I could do about it. A strange alchemy was underway; there would be no turning back.
‘Have you written to your mother?’ Dulcie called to me one afternoon when I was attempting to sharpen the shears again. They had already become blunted by the stubborn stalks of the thirsty meadow.
With a tinge of guilt I realised that in the several weeks of wandering that had led to here, where the days were now smudging together in one long streak of sunshine broken only by the darkness of falling night at each tired day’s end, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, so I said so.
‘Well, won’t she be worried?’ asked Dulcie.
Again, it was not a thought I had entertained. ‘I’m sure she’s fine. She’ll be dead busy.’
‘And I’m sure she won’t sleep properly until she’s at least had a scribbled line from you.’
‘Do you think?’
‘I know.’
I frowned.
‘I have excellent stationery,’ said Dulcie. ‘You may use it.’
That night, by the light of the lamp, with the dog stretched out beside me on my blankets, I put aside my book, primped up my pillow and sat back to write a note to my mother on stiff paper as grainy and mottled as an eggshell.
Dear Mam,
I hope you and Dad are both keeping well. I am writing to you from a shed in a meadow above a bay in Yorkshire. It is dry and warm, and I am quite well.
The shed belongs to a lady called Dulcie, who I have been doing some odd jobs for. Dulcie is tall. She is taller than any man I have known except perhaps Jack Barclay, though unlike Big Jackie she still has her front teeth and doesn’t eat worms.
In fact, she eats a lot yet she is not at all fat. She reminds me of a very long cat and she is not like anyone from the village, or anywhere. Her cooking is second only to yours.
The weather is beautiful here, as I hope it is there. I’d wager the allotment is parched and that Dad’s parsnips think their throats have been slit. Are the pigeons flying in this heat? I am turning as brown as a berry, swimming daily and reading lots of books. I am seeing England, or at least a lovely green part of it.
I plan on coming home when the exam results are announced, though I can’t quite remember when that is, so if I am not back in time perhaps you might fetch them for me and send them on. I will forward an address if or when I have one.
Warmest wishes,
Robert
P.S. Dulcie has a dog who looks like he is trained to savage all comers but really is very friendly. He is called Butler because he acts like one. He is sitting beside me now. He is the second new friend I have made this summer.
One day, over a very early lunch of sorrel omelettes served with salad and deep-fried beetroot chips, quite out of the blue Dulcie asked, ‘Have you read the white horses one, then?’
It took me a moment to realise that she was continuing the conversation that had ended promptly over a fortnight earlier.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘You’re a bright boy.’
I had no reply to this but found myself blushing slightly.
‘So you know,’ she said.
‘Know?’
She fixed me with a slightly stern look.
‘You know by now what fate befell her. Or you should if you have half a functioning brain.’
I hesitated before speaking again.
‘Did she – ’
‘Yes?’ she interrupted.
‘Did she – ’
‘Go on,’ Dulcie said, as if she were intercepting any attempt at a reply.
‘Did Romy drown herself?’
Dulcie looked away, out to sea, then back to me.
‘Is that what you think happened?’
Again I hesitated, uncertain.
‘Yes. I think that’s what “White Horses” is about.’
She frowned.
‘Then you are correct.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’m right, really I am.’
‘And what did you think of the poem?’
‘It was the saddest thing I’ve ever read. But – ’ The words appeared beyond me, but I reached for them. ‘In a strange way, it was beautiful too.’
Dulcie nodded. She nodded for a long time.
‘She is in the offing now.’
We finished our omelettes in silence.
‘Have you read the collection, Dulcie?’ I asked when our plates were clear. ‘Have you read The Offing? You didn’t actually say that you had.’
‘Why would I?’
I stammered but Dulcie continued.
‘Romy bequeathed it to me.’
‘I’m not sure I know what that means.’
‘She left it behind, right there in that studio of hers. She put it on the desk in full view and then she walked down the hill and into the sea, and was never seen again. One poem was set aside. “White Horses”. A week later I read it, but then I put it all away in an old briefcase and there it has sat ever since. In my grief I was beyond anger. So no, I have not read it. And now you know the truth of it.’
‘Did she mean to kill herself?’
Even just saying the words felt awkward, as if I had broken a code of silence. Kill herself. When Dulcie did not reply I immediately regretting asking the question, and I wished I were able to retract it. What felt like a long time passed.
‘She intended to become immortal,’ Dulcie finally said. ‘But to do that one must die. And to die like that one must walk away from all that one knows and loves.’
I hesitated, but the need to ask another question felt like a compulsion that I couldn’t ignore.
‘Why was that poem called “White Horses”?’
‘It’s more nautical symbolism,’ she explained. ‘A recurring image, forever scorched upon my retinas. White horses are the breaking waves. The curling crest could be seen as the mane and the crashing surely sounds like hooves thundering across the turf.’
‘I didn’t understand what “exeunt” means either.’
‘Ah, well, that’s a theatrical term. Shakespearean. It is used as a direction for leaving the stage. For exiting, usually in the plural, though I think this still works. And now you can put the pieces of the puzzle together.’
I thought it over for a full minute.
‘“Exeunt (or White Horses)” was Romy’s last goodbye before she drowned herself?’
‘As I said, you’re a bright boy.’
‘It’s a beautiful way to leave the world,’ I said.
‘She was a poet. I sometimes think perhaps she was the first pure modernist too. The one who could have opened the door for whatever comes next. A bold new future was within her grasp, I’m sure of it.’
‘It’s a shame that the world never got to hear her say goodbye.’
Dulcie pursed her lips and looked away. She took a drink of tea.
‘And neither did I.’
‘Did she leave a note?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope. Or if she did it was well hidden. Believe me, I searched the pockets of her clothes, rifled through her possessions. No stone was left unturned. She left nothing but the poems and a Romy-shaped hole in the lives of many. I can tell you, Robert, the silence that followed has been awful. No one should ever have to go through that sense of suddenness, the finality of it all, without the means to respond. No goodbye; nothing. Years of nothing.’
I swatted a fly away that was repeatedly trying to land on my arm.
‘Did she have writer’s block?’ I asked.
Dulcie shook her head quite vehemently at this. ‘God, no. Not at all. In fact, she had the opposite. She had writer’s … deluge. And in a way that can be just as destructive, for one cannot always effectively judge the standard of the work when it comes pouring out; one merely gets caught up in the mania of it all. And it was mania.’
‘Can I ask you something else?’
‘You don’t need to ask me if you can ask something. Just skip that bit in future, Robert. We’ll all be dead soon.’
‘Why does Romy call you the “spinner of honey”?’
‘Because at that time I had a passion for beekeeping, amongst other things.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes, here. Until I stopped. Even giving it away, there was still more honey than one person and her dog needs. One spins the comb to extract the honey in liquid form. So Honeyspinner became her name for me. Or one of them, anyway.’
We sat in silence for quite some time, and I considered whether to ask Dulcie one more question. Finally I did.
‘Have you ever thought about getting The Offing published?’
Dulcie sighed and then squinted out at the sea, which was sparkling. But she said nothing.
‘Perhaps it’s too painful for you to read.’
She turned and snapped at me then. ‘Your problem is you’re too astute for one so humble.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know a thing about poetry. But I thought the book was brilliant and that other people might feel the same.’
‘There you go again, playing the simple cap-wringing, semi-literate country lad.’
Dulcie caught herself. She straightened herself. Adjusted her hat.
‘No, it’s me that’s sorry, Robert. Don’t take my sharp tongue personally. But you shouldn’t do yourself down either. The point is, Romy’s poetry moved you, so your opinion is as valid as anyone’s. In fact, you are exactly who she was writing to. The critics she never cared for. Or the academics. Hers was a working-class upbringing too and she just wanted to be read, so she would definitely be delighted to hear your praise, she really would.’
‘Weren’t you tempted to read the collection, though, Dulcie?’
‘Every single day.’
‘But you never have.’
‘I thought I had made that abundantly clear.’
‘Could I ask why?’
‘I thought that too would be abundantly clear.’
Dulcie sighed deeply when she saw that I didn’t understand how the manuscript – something that might hold answers to her questions – could sit untouched for years, so continued.
‘Are you afraid of ghosts?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe in them.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
Confused, I shook my head again.
‘We are all of us afraid of being confronted by our past
selves in the small hours of the night,’ she said. ‘That’s what ghosts are: the raw truths we dare not face or the voices of those we have failed. We carry within us our own ghosts with which we haunt ourselves. To read the book would be to raise the dead, and I’m not quite ready for that. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.’
‘But there are surely others out there like me who would enjoy the poetry collection.’
The conversation clearly closed, Dulcie said nothing and appeared deep in troubled thought, but then her face suddenly brightened and her tone changed entirely.
‘Listen, I’ve had a tremendous idea. You’ve been working like a Sherpa on that blasted studio and I think I’m suffering a touch of the old cabin fever myself. All this gloomy chat is getting to me so why not let’s crank up one of the engines and go for a Sunday drive. And if it’s not Sunday, then we shall name it appropriately.’
‘What do you mean by “one of the engines”?’
‘Well, a motor-car one, of course.’
‘You have a car?’
‘I have several.’
I was taken aback by this revelation. Aside from the farm vehicles that I had come across, I had never yet met anyone who owned an automobile for what might be termed recreational purposes, let alone several of them. Vehicles were large and dirty and practical – coughing, growling, mud-splattered things – and the thought of someone I knew actually owning a vehicle had never occurred to me. Only the wealthy kept cars.
‘But how?’
‘What do you mean how? I acquired them.’
‘All at once?’
‘What questions you ask. Of course not.’
For a moment I wondered if perhaps Dulcie was having me on. I looked around.
‘But where do you keep them?’
‘Well.’ She paused for a moment. ‘There’s one in an underground car park in deepest Chelsea and another is being kept warm by a dear friend who drives it around the lanes of the improbably named village of Upper Slaughter in the Cotswolds, and then there’s two – no, wait, three – in a barn at Francis Storm’s place.’
The Offing Page 13